Letters
Make Do and Mend: Tales from the World’s Largest Darning Egg
Dear Ann,
This past weekend I had a delirious crafting experience.
It started out as a normal Saturday, by which I mean, we were doing our weekly quarantine house cleaning, which has become so efficient in its military precision that my housemates and I blast through it with time to spare. We’ve achieved a beautiful choreography: the Killers playlist plays, the O-Cedar spin mop spins, the vacuum cleaner vacuums, the dogs bark, and before we know it, it’s all done.
The Gardiners like to clean. As a people, historically, we have not gone in for the leisurely pursuits. We have gone in for maintenance projects, highly focused on organization, tidiness, and generally holding up our end of the neighborhood. Favorite family projects include: taking everything out of the garage, then putting everything back into the garage. Pegboards and the labeling thereof. Hosing things down whether they need it or not. Oiling things whether they need it or not. A fond memory of my dad is his weekly warm-weather ritual: rinsing the aluminum siding. During his cigar years, he got a cigar smoked while doing this; I daresay no golfer has enjoyed golfing as much as my dad enjoyed spraying water on aluminum.
So Saturday, a next-generation Gardiner and I decided that the dessert course for our weekly housecleaning would be a deep-clean of the living room. We’d take everything out of the living room, get after all the feathers, grit, and cobwebs, and put everything back in the living room. Goal: use all the attachments to the vacuum. As part of this project, we’d air out the carpet and put it back down, flipped and rotated.
This was where the weekend took a dramatic turn.
The carpet has had a large hole in it, for many years. Without my noticing it, an unnamed beloved member of the household had shuffled their feet over this spot several million times, until the soles of the socks were united with the pad under the carpet. I’ve been looking at that hole for years and trying not to see it. I love the carpet a lot, and I just couldn’t bear thinking about it. I entertained passing thoughts of visibly mending it, but pushed them away. It just seemed like a big, vague project—too much. But the passing thoughts persisted, and on Saturday, with all the furniture off the carpet, they broke through.
I took the carpet off the clothesline, laid it on the table on the porch like a person prepped for surgery, and went down to the basement to search the stash. A plan was forming.
I’ll let the photos show you how things went.
The hole. I started by cutting all of this mess out, back to healthy tissue, in a neat, rectangular shape. This is something you only have the strength to do after you’ve lived with a big hole in the rug for a very long time.
Considering all the Kon Mari-ing I’ve done in my time, I was amazed to find all these promising materials in the stash.
I used two shades of Euroflax Sportweight Linen to “warp” the “loom.” If you think of the dining table as a darning egg, and the rug as a sock, it all makes sense. If I had a second shot at this, I would double-warp it. With experience comes wisdom. I have no regrets.
I got a lot of encouragement on Instagram—people on there love mending. Someone asked me if I’d learned how to do this from watching a video on YouTube. In fact, I learned how to do this from watching everybody on Instagram visibly mending their jeans for the past five years.
A skeptical Olive stayed at the bedside for most of the procedure. This is Olive’s prayers-up face.
The actual weaving was exactly like weaving on a potholder loom. I used the same bent-tip tapestry needle I use to weave in ends on my knitting. The whole project was extremely manual.
I figured things out as I went. One thing I learned was that it was easy to weave in ends in the middle of the weaving; they just disappear into it, making those spots a little thicker but not noticeable visually.
Day 2. Running out of the single skein of hand-dyed cotton tape yarn of unknown provenance.
This meant I got to change colors, which is always a happy thing.
Basically, I ended up making an entire small rug—inside the big rug. A play within a play. A Sean Scully painting. The world’s largest darn.
It took me about 7-8 hours of weaving time, total. I had a blast. I was amazed that it actually worked, and how well it came out.
We barely got the living room furniture back in the living room before the opening prayer of Zoom Kippur on Sunday night, but we did it.
What’s next?
Love,
Kay
You are a brave, brave woman. I am ashamed to admit I would have caved and bought a new one.
Beautiful story reflecting a beautiful soul ❤️
Sean Scully! I dream of projects that incorporate his work. Plus there are (dog-made) holes on my favorite unmatched couch and easy chair in the floral fabric only a grandma and me could love and that cry out for visibly handstitched patches in some cheery orange or turquoise fabric. There’s even a box with my great grandmother’s wicked looking upholstery needle in it. How did she know I would need it?
You rock! I’m sure Olive was integral to the success of you project. She is adorable!
Wonderful project with excellent results and because it was a pandemic project that rug will always have its own story.
Could your unidentifiable cotton tape be Colinette Wigwam, possibly left over from the once must-have Absolutely Fabulous Throw kit?
What an enterprise! And what an outcome! Congrats!!
I think we are becoming so resourceful as cover as slowed us down to a stop and we reach back to the well of memories and find joy, as always, in making, if not making do. Kudos.
Wow!! That is BEAUTIFUL!! I almost wish I had a big rug mending project!! This is probably a silly question, but how did you attach the “warp” threads?
I used the tapestry needle, and just ran the yarn across the hole, back and forth, anchoring it in the rug on either side. I used the weave of the rug to space the threads, and I knotted on new yarn (surgeon’s knot, which I already knew, because the weaver’s knot did not click for me from YouTube).
Thank you for the detail explanation. It’s beautiful and a work of art. You have tremendous patience and a true artist.
I love this – kudos, Kay, on this spectacular “Mending” Repair project.
Well done, you! That is awesome, and it will become part of your family’s lore….”Remenber during the covid year when Mom decided she would mend the rug….
I LOVE this, Kay. Just last night I was scrolling Instagram, looking at Visible Mending sites and inspirations. Well done. It looks great. And if you could, please channel some of that Gardiner Cleaning Mojo north, to Ontario. Thank you. (smile)
“With experience comes wisdom.” There are days when I could say that to myself a thousand times. (And then there are other days when I just try to blank it all out and look for things that Spark Joy. I am a victim of popular culture.) Isn’t Tom of Holland also a practitioner of make do and mend? I am inspired by both of you and yet not entirely disappointed that I lost track of my mother-in-law’s vintage darning egg a while ago, I was just regarding it as a historical relic anyway. From where I sit Olive looked protective of your project more than skeptical. Maybe she was both? (I could also talk fondly about pegboards but haven’t I said enough??)
So well done, it looks great! And a story well told, so fun.
Wow, you did a great job Kay
What?! You didn’t use the hole as an excuse to go buy an 6-foot-wide rug loom and weave a new one out of the shards of the old rug? I mean, the rug loom itself could have taken up that obvious space in the living room, you know, the space people sit around and talk through – the loom could have taken the place of a big (very big) coffee table. Whacking the weft into a rug as you weave it has well-known restorative and frustration-removal properties, besides. “I don’t know WHY That Person has to be SUCH a crab, there’s a pandemic going on, be NICE to each other, PEOPLE!” And so forth. Not that I know anything about that. Also the hole in the rug in my living room is, thankfully, under the couch, so no loom in my living room. (Three other rooms in the house, yes.)
O the whacking of the weft… could be a new xmas carol
I loved the whacking of the weft but I did not know the technical term for it—thank you! :))))
Bravo!!!!! I love it!!! Thanks for the inspiration to mend. It looks so cool.
I’ve purchased materials for mending my jeans and am still too afraid to start! Brava.
This is truly impressive. And I cannot believe you are a happy cleaner?!?
On Saturdays!
Great job! And I love that picture of Olive!
I love this!
Ah, you restored it……..wonderful and wonderfully………me, I’d have patched it………….big’ole, biggin’ patch………as far as the eye could see……..antiquerz, say leaf de thang originelle……..where sum holy jeans anna, anna tak a pic….or a smellfie. ((: Oh, doze radnecks…..
Stunning. Absolutely perfect rug for a beach house. The rug and the story will live on for the next generation.
Brilliant!
Well, DARN! That’s an impressive piece of work! Another reason to hang on to the Stash!
AND, even better, you had enough wits left to document the whole shebang with photos!
So impressed. Well done.
Zoom Kippur, I love the phrase.
What better way to visualize our aesthetic than to see our project leftovers.
The rug mend brings back memories of my Auntie Mac Mac. She was the queen of reuse, recycle and repurpose. I still have a pair of socks that she darned and gave me as a gift because they were, “Good as new”. She began her practice as the oldest daughter of a tenant farmer and never stopped. She lived to be 103 and left a fortune to her heirs. Thanx for sharing.
Wabi Sabi
Wow, that is pretty darn amazing, Kay. Make do and mend!
Wow and Thank-you!! Happy New Year to you and your family…and all those MDKers who are celebrating.
Now that’s pretty cool, Kay. I would have never thought to attempt a mend, but you make it look so easy.
This makes me want to cut holes in things just to have the opportunity to darn them.
Fab work, Kay. Lovelovelove.
That’s funny but I had the same thought. I have mended my daughter’s favorite jeans several times over & I have succeeded only once in having one come close to this. Beautiful work.
I am looking for other thin spots, which are not that hard to find on a rug that has been on the floor since the kids were toddlers. Repetition of variation makes a pattern!
I never would have attempted such a huge project and yet it turned out so great! You have Vision Kay. Next up from Kay-a sashiko tutorial on MDK!
Magnificent. Love the rug, and love the mend. Spending 8 hours just making it work seems like the best possible Saturday.
I married a man who thinks of all making and productive doing as a dreadful chore. Happily, he is very Calvinist and very good at doing chores, but it’s a drag that he can’t find any joy in making a room glorious by paint, tidying, or cleaning, and his idea of a good time is always, always, always a game, sporting, tabletop or otherwise.
I can’t exactly advertise myself as a super cleaner, but I can get very happy about “let’s make a thing!” or “let’s make a thing nice!”
Inspiring! Plus, I had never heard of Sean Scully, now I am seeing his work as knitting inspiration!
Oh my word, his work is inspiring. I met his art dealer a few years back (as you do, I have powerful cool-old-gal connections what can I say) and asked if he would be tickled to know that he has inspired knitted blankets and she said he would love it.
Zoom Kippur. Ha! Ha! Ha!
As soon as quarantine becomes unnecessary, you can come on over to the West coast any time and I’ll let you clean my house. So much scope, so much to explore; you’ll be endlessly entertained! 😉
ps: Yes, I LOVE the rug.
Now that is a superpower! Magnifique, Kay!
Great job!
You are so smart. And so lucky that your stash had the right colors.
Love Zoom Kippur!
My granddaughter recently celebrated her Zoommitzvah.
This brought back memories of learning to darn in a home ec class in 8th grade — a skill I used a bit during my back-to-the-earth hungry-hippie days in the early 70s. I remember also doing decorative embroidery on my hole-y jeans during that period (holes in jeans were actually frowned on then). But never did I consider a task as big as yours. What a wonderful solution to dealing with a well-loved carpet.
Absolutely beautiful
And beautifully done!
I love everything about this.
Sort of unrelated to the topic, and you probably already addressed this, but I am wondering where you are now? Out of the city and with your people it seems. Is it a permanent move?
Oh my goodness! My husband and I had a good laugh from this! Your second paragraph described us to a “t”! We too hose down the house each spring, wash all the windows, empty the garage to organize and put it all back…..all the things you described. No one in our neighborhood does this and they just might think we’re a little nuts, but it’s our “thing” and we enjoy doing it! Thanks for making us feel just a little normal! :>)
That’s awesome. You rock!!
Bravo You! You really crack me up!
How brave of you to try! Very impressive work.
Oh gosh, if April comes and goes without a garage emptying/hosing out/reorganizing, then it weighs on me like an ill-fitting coat! Give me a hose and a broom any day!
I love it!
Thank you for this moment of pure reading joy!
Love it!!
Your initiative and talents are inspiring. And what was in the air last weekend? I have been looking at a Shetland-made cardigan of mine, although not quite as long as you’ve been looking at your lovely rug. While the cardigan is handcrafted and sports a classic yoke, the colors were….virtually nonexistent. OK, I admit I have a red problem (red glasses, red jackets, red glasses, red shoes, red motorcycle! etc), but the beiges and browns were getting to me. I, too, decided to act in the pre-ZoomKippur gloaming. I wanted to channel something along the lines of Gamaldags by Helene Magnusson, so I grabbed some jewel-toned Shetland 2-ply and started duplicate stitching. Alas, this is going to take longer than your estimable megadarn. But I think it will be just as satisfying. Many thanks for all you have brought to the knitter verse.
Thanks for the Sean Kelly shout out. I love his work and you are so right. Beautiful work. Your Midwestern forebears would be so proud.
Wow! Love this! I wish that I enjoyed weaving in ends on my knitting as much as you enjoyed weaving on part of your rug. Job well done, Kay!
Amazing…..as usual
What an endeavour! You are an intrepid craftsperson, with a (clearly) strong gene for “tidying”. And 7-8 hours – that’s commitment. I would not have attempted the job – I would have tried to put it under the furniture!
You’re a brave woman, Kay Gardiner, it looks terrific!
AH-MAZING! I love everything about this.
I would be anxiously awaiting the next hole in the rug! I love this!!
This is amazing – I am so impressed! I would have been too chicken. I love the result.
This is wonderful! I’m sure that you are the one who told me about Tom of Holland and Visible Mending, and I search out VM posts from time to time. Despite my fascination, I haven’t done more than a small repair, visible or otherwise since then. However, as my hand sewing skills have improved over the years just from weaving in ends, I felt brave enough to do some sewing on my knitting recently. I made a mushroom hat a while ago. Specifically a modified EZ “Monster Tam” meant to resemble Amanita Muscaria. (And using my favorite literal “hat trick,” knitting in a band lining using stretchy Cascade Fixation cotton yarn. Increases comfort and improves fit!) The after-market sewing embellishments were mushroom spots, using a very pseudo-French knot technique, with mystery singles yarn, and I am not displeased with the result! Here’s to sewing on fabric! And re-weaving rugs! And sewing on knitting! And…
Outstanding! I’m genuinely impressed! It’s like catching whispers of dust in a cyclone when I’ve attempted darning. The end product nothing recognizable by any means. lol. Thank you for reminding me that repetition brings improvement! I am inspired to continue…
Brava, Kay!! Well done. It looks great. And, an excellent example of my Great Aunt’s third favorite advice to nieces, nephews & other kin: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
This is brilliant! Kudos to you for your bravery and resourcefulness.
Beautifully executed Dr. Gardiner! I see a rigid heddle loom in you future!
The memory of Dad hosing down the siding on 34th street came creeping in. He probably didn’t do it as much when I was a kid. Maybe only monthly?… but I do remember a cigar occasionally. One of my favorite pics is Dad smoking a cigarette outside by the wall, and me as a toddler close by. Mom always said he quit because I was watching.
This is awesome!
I once darned a sofa after our puppy had a nibble on it. My husband thought I was crazy.